Powerpoint & Information

This is about Information,
and how Powerpoint,
as an example of IT in common use, can be used to provide useful information
- or not.

It's also about how we may have a tendency to rely too much upon IT Itself.

For example, Powerpoint came on to the scene in 1984. Has it helped or has it hindered?

What happens when we're too reliant on Information Technology? What happens when IT becomes an end in itself, rather than a means to an end, albeit a powerful means?

What is or should be the central aim of IT
in this Information Age?
Simple! It's INFORMATION VALUE!

And how might Information Value be defined?
How about this:

• The central aim of Information Technology
  (at least in the business organisation working environment),
  is Information Value, which is:
  
  information for effective knowledge work,
  and/or
  information for customer value (including internal customers),
  and/or
  information for business performance,
  
  - information that's relevant, reliable and rapidly available,
  
  - as, where and how needed.
  

How does our use of Powerpoint, as an example of IT in common use, help in achieving this end-purpose & aim?

One of the next big things in computing will be natural interface with the computer. It's about the human computer interface (HCI). But will advances in HCI help or hinder, or both, or might it depend on how it's used? Will it be like Powerpoint?

When you hear you're about to sit through another Powerpoint presentation do you say something like:
Oh no, not another, boring batch of bullet bits!

The conventional, corporate way of using Powerpoint is to use standard templates complete with bullet point format.

But, as the old saying goes:
A picture (or an image) is worth a thousand words.

And then, as Albert Einstein said:
Make things as simple as possible;
but no more simple than that.

So it's a balance between:
- Information Overload via a batch of boring bullet bits
and/or
- A simplistic set of colourful, image/picture-based slides, like a children's TV programme.

What would Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln have thought of Powerpoint, and how might they have used it?

The NHS and Systems Thinking

Break up the NHS, was the previous posting.

Now a Conservative Party think tank is saying:
Break up the NHS IT.

They say it would create huge savings for the Taxpayer.

Why?

Because the £12 billion NHS IT programme launched in 2002, which is now five years behind schedule, which is the world's largest civilian IT project, and which is already billions of pounds in the red - is too big!

So what if it's too big?

To recapitulate the tenth of the ten Systems Thinking principles in the last posting:

Every system has an optimum size beyond which it ceases to be viable, due to (1) intra-relationship complexity and, (2) for organisations and project in organisations, bureaucracy and loss of human identity with the system as a whole.

An independent review of the NHS IT, commissioned by Health Minister Stephen O'Brien, concluded that:

1. The project had been too centralised, making it too big, inefficient, and costly for the taxpayer
2. 50% of the IT vendors/suppliers involved had already pulled out of the project.
3. The handling of the project to date had been "shambolic".
4. Its bureaucracy had been "hugely disruptive for the NHS " - with negative cost & care implications for patients.

When large, Stalinist, central planning government embarks on projects such as this, albeit with good intentions, they show themselves blind to the real choice-needs of people, the cost impact implications for the taxpayer - and an ignorance or denial of Systems Thinking.

For the sake of society, for the sake of us all, this and future governments need to embrace Systems Thinking.

The previous posting says why.